I'm Having a Bad Mental Health Day

The cats consider it their sworn duty to cheer me up when I’m down by sitting on me until I feel better.

I am having a rough mental health day

 I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve been taking my depression meds regularly, and I’ve been a little bit bad about using my Fisher Wallace stimulator, but I’ve been using it at least once a day most days. I think it may have something to do with the fact that I telework full time now and don’t have a car currently, so I can literally spend days without leaving my house. My allergies have been pretty bad lately, which has given me on and off insomnia lately and makes me generally just feel like crap. I haven’t been walking outside as much lately, although I did walk about a lot on Monday. But it’s hard to tell.

Sometimes having depression reminds me of an old detective novel. Every time my brain feels shadowed, I have to sit down, figure out what is causing the depression THIS time, and resolve the problem. So many things exacerbate my depression. Not seeing enough of my friends. Seeing too much of my friends and not having enough alone time. Not getting out of the house. Forgetting to exercise or take my meds or use my stimulator twice a day like I’m really supposed to.  Feeling sick. Feeling stressed. It can be any of these things or some combination or something i can’t remember right now. I had really hoped that adding the FW stimulator last year would prevent me having to do this ever again, but alas, no.

I should note though, that the brain stimulator has significantly improved my overall mental health state to the point that it has actually changed my life. Before I started using the stimulator, I was on two anti-depressants and still fighting bouts of depression and bad mental health every week. Last summer in particular, I had a really tough time and was experiencing bad mental health days almost every single day, which was what led me to order the stimulator. And I’m so glad I did, as these days, I maybe have one bad bout of depression every few months or so. I’m overall happier and better about focusing on things, I can talk about charged topics like money with my husband without snapping at him, and I have enough energy to really focus on my dreams and push toward them in a way that I really haven’t in years. If I hadn’t started using the stimulator, I really don’t think I would be calling myself an author at this point at all – I certainly wouldn’t have any lit mag publications or a self published ebook on Amazon.

But today, today is a bad mental health day. I’m not in any danger; really I’m not sure I’ve ever been any danger to myself. Bad mental health for me takes the form of a heavy burden on my brain, a shadow preventing me from thinking happy things or achieving all the things I want to achieve. It also used to take the form of rumination over mistakes from the past, constant self-recrimination, and fear of failure (so just covering the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, yeah?). And sure I still have those days sometimes, but they’re much more rare now and are rarely quite as bad as they used to be. I am able to get out of bed in the morning, I am able to work and be productive. I’m not quite able to write fiction when I’m having a bad health day, but I can pour out some blog posts, so that’s not the worst thing, right? At least that’s what I did.

As always, I’m happy to talk about my experience with depression, meds, or with the fisher wallace stimulator. Please reach out at rachael.dickzen@gmail.com if you have any questions!